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Category: General Language
How do linguists view programming languages?
Read Logan R. Kearsley’s answer to How do linguists view programming languages? Vote #1 Logan R. Kearsley. What he said. Supplemental: At very very most, a linguist programmer will see YACC rules specifying a programming language’s syntax, and think “Oh, how cute. Kinda like phrase structure rules, but ludicrously simpler.” Or, look at the three […]
What is meant by projection problem in semantics?
Presupposition (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) http://eecoppock.info/Presupposi… Simple clauses have presuppositions. For example, The current king of France is bald presupposes that there is a current king of France. If you do various things to a clause, like negate it, question it, or say it’s unlikely, the claim of the clause is no longer affirmed. But […]
Why is the communist symbol (☭) an emoji?
There are two problematic premises in this question. The first is that the primary semiotic of the hammer and sickle is “mass random murder of dissidents”, rather than “common ownership of the means of production”. The legacy of Communism may have been tainted by what Lenin and Stalin did; but that does not make the […]
Is dysphemism the same as swearing?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysphemism Can you swear without dysphemisms? Yes: swearing involves using profane vocabulary; dysphemism involves negative, offensive terms for particular things. You can swear without dysphemisms, and indeed without having any negativity at all, through the use of profanities as positive intensifiers: That was a motherfucking magnificent job! Holy fucking shit, that felt good! Jesus, that […]
What character can we use as an irony mark?
Irony punctuation – Wikipedia There have been various proposals over the years, though none have taken off. In internet discourse, where irony marks are pretty necessary, the smiley has prevailed; it’s more about “I’m only joking! I’m only joking!” than about actual amusement. Some Ethiopian languages use a special temherte slaqî or temherte slaq punctuation […]
In linguistics is there a term parallel to “nominal” referring to a category used to group together verbs and adjectives based on shared properties?
I don’t know of one; in fact what I’ve seen is linguists call adjectives in Asian languages verbs, to deal with the commonalities. Stative verbs, if you make it more precise. In fact, whether adjectives are real as a cross-linguistic category is a legit question. Answered 2016-11-04 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/In-linguistics-is-there-a-term-parallel-to-nominal-referring-to-a-category-used-to-group-together-verbs-and-adjectives-based-on-shared-properties/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]
Why does language grow in a democratic way?
I’m going to limit this to lexicon, and not get into other areas of language change. Think about it. You just spoke of scientific terms being planned out meticulously and promoted by universally acknowledged authorities. Scientific terms are part of language. That includes smaller languages’ authorities, which come up with canonical translations of other languages’ […]
Who are some notable linguists in the field of historical pragmatics?
Andreas Jucker seems to be the guy that single handedly conjured this field into being, including the journal and the collection of essays in the late 90s. (I think I reviewed it way back then.) Namechecked at Historical pragmatics – Wikipedia UZH – English Department Ah, bugger. He’s the Dean of Arts at Zurich U. […]
Does how a language sound represent the character of the nation?
When I was lecturing historical linguistics, I addressed this notion as follows: “Just picture the 19th century German linguist, captured by cannibals and boiling away in a cauldron, saying: [German accent] ‘Hah! Zis is ein joke! You people are all pussies! You do not even haff ein alveolar affrikat!’” And beware of cause and effect […]
If the scientific study of language is by its very own nature descriptive not prescriptive, why is linguistics a science?
Well, as Zeibura S. Kathau has commented, Science is by nature descriptive. And linguistics is a science. A very soft science, I’ll grant you, but no less of one than geology or astronomy. There’s a word for fields of study that say how things should be, rather than how things are. That word is not […]